


faster than a final breath

by ProfessorESP



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: (Anevka is in this), (I told you guys Anevka was in this), Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Murder, crackship, doc title: meet cute with murder, first, im kbnevka TRASH you guys. join me in the pit., ship ALL the dead siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 05:38:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14710145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProfessorESP/pseuds/ProfessorESP
Summary: In the span of a little less than ten minutes, Kay had stolen a carriage, kidnapped a princess, and fought off a group of deadly assassins. All in all, it was a very interesting first date.





	faster than a final breath

Kay’s first date happened a little something like this: he was in Vienna for a day trip, tracking down a particularly troublesome spark who’d made an insultingly awful critique of his thesis paper, when his cab swayed slightly and a woman hurled herself through the window and straight into his lap. 

She was about his age, maybe a little older, dressed nicely for the afternoon save for the fresh bloodstain soaking the bottom of her blouse, like she’d stabbed a much larger person in the gut and hadn’t pulled away quickly enough before they started bleeding out. Her eyes were blazing with the particular madness only a spark could possess. Her hair, significantly redder than the bloodstain, was starting to fall out of its pins.

He was already a little in love. 

“Everything alright back there?” the cab driver called, thumping the front of the carriage. The woman pulled out a knife, pointed it at Kay's throat, and waited. 

“No, everything’s fine,” he shouted back, silently praying that when he had told the jaegers not to come they had politely ignored him and now happened to be trailing him from the rooftops. The woman, apparently satisfied with that answer, lowered her knife but didn’t put it away.

“If we get caught, you’re kidnapping me for ransom,” she said, sliding off his lap and onto the narrow strip of free space on the seat. It didn’t make much of a difference. It wasn’t a very large cab. 

It took him a second to process that. “What?  _ Why?” _

“Because you’re very poor and very foolish.”

“Listen, Miss...”

_ “Princess  _ Anevka,” she corrected, scanning the streets. Huh. He was pretty sure they were neighbors.

“Your highness. I doubt—”

Something heavy hit the roof. He and Anevka looked up in unison, then at each other.

“What were you running from again?” he asked.

“Family obligations,” she quipped, right as the assassin came through the window.

Kay dropped down as far as he could as Anevka threw her knife over his shoulder. It sank into the assassin’s side, but she just tugged it out and took a swipe at them with it. Anevka pulled out another knife—how many of those did she  _ have _ —and thrust it into the assassin’s gut. Kay scrambled to his feet to keep the body from falling on him, then grabbed the top of the window and used both legs to kick it out into the street. 

“Shouldn’t you have bodyguards for this sort of thing?” he demanded. Speaking of, shouldn’t  _ he  _ have bodyguards for this sort of thing?

“Usually,” Anevka sighed, “but she’s nursing a broken arm at the moment so I’ve been forced to resort to sub-par service. It’s hard to find good help these days.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said dryly. “Should we be expecting more?”

“Oh, probably.”

“Fan- _ tastic.”  _ He dug through his pockets, pulling out various odds and ends and tearing them apart in his lap. “Keep an eye out, will you?”

Building a death ray was easy. He could do it in his sleep. This one was a little small, but the materials in his watch had a high melting point, so they probably wouldn’t dissolve into corrosive metal this time. Poor casing, though. He rolled up his pants to cannibalize part of his knee joint. Aha, there. A perfect fit.  He snapped everything into place and grinned as it powered up with a distinctive, dangerous whine. 

Princess Anevka was eyeing him with interest. “You’re a spark?”

Seriously? “I’m a  _ Heterodyne." _

She squinted at him. “You don’t really expect me to believe that  _ you’re  _ Klaus Heterodyne.”

Using his given name would’ve irritated him on its own, but this was ridiculous. He gestured at his clothes—trilobite pin, trilobite buttons, trilobite embroidered lapels—and looked at her incredulously. She just rolled her eyes.

“If clothing proved anything, half the people from here to Paris would be Mechanicsburgers.” 

Which, fair. Some of the tourists they got wore more trilobites than the locals. 

“Would anyone really be stupid enough to impersonate me?” he asked, switching tracks.

“Someone foolish enough to kidnap a princess of Sturmhalten certainly would be.”

“You kidnapped yourself!” he sputtered.

“And yet you killed my rescuer and kicked her body into the street,” she said, crossing her arms and looking unbearable smug. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Damn, she had him in a corner here. Van was going to be pissed. 

There was a strangled scream, then a thump. They looked out the window just in time to see the driver laying in the street. Then the carriage made a sharp turn and people started screaming.

“Well, now we’re both being kidnapped,” Kay snapped. On a gamble, he cupped his hands around his mouth and stuck his head out the window. “HOY! SOME HELP!”

The was a loud “Hyu gotz it, boss!” followed by an even louder “VE HUNT!” 

Kay breathed a sigh of relief, slumping back into the seat. The cab swayed as four jaegers landed on it: two on the roof, one on the side, and one on the rear. The shift in balance sent them sliding down to the corner. Anevka slapped her hands against the wall just in time to stop herself from landing on him. Their faces were about three inches apart. If Kay weren’t already half-falling off the seat they would be even closer.

“The jaegers are a point in your favor, although it begs the question of why they didn’t intervene sooner,” she said casually.

“Oggie likes matchmaking,” he said, distracted by how blue her eyes were.

“...I broke into your carriage and threatened you with a knife.”

“You don’t read a lot of Heterodyne boys stories, do you?”

One of the jaegers popped their claws through the top of the cab, peeling back a few inches of metal before they stuck. There was a dull, squishy thunk, and then a body clad in a purple cloak landing in an awning on the other side of the street.

“Ho, gudd vun, brodder!”

“Hy bet hy ken get vun on de street lights!”

“Hyu iz on!”

There was another dull noise, and then the jaegers started cheering.

“They’re very loud,” Anevka muttered.

Kay grinned. “That’s how you know they’re winning.” 

Anevka looked stunned. It tended to surprise people when he got vicious. They didn’t expect Bill Heterodyne’s son to smile with so many teeth. 

A hooded face appeared in the opposite window. The assassin hung from the cab with one hand and pulled out his knife with the other. Kay switched his death ray into his other hand and fired over Anevka’s shoulder. She turned just in time to see the assassin’s upper half get scorched down to the bones and fall back into the street.

“Nize vun, Master Kay!”

The barrel of the death ray was red-hot, but it hadn’t melted, which was a point in his watchmaker’s favor. Anevka pulled a small screwdriver out of her pocket and glanced over him with a crocodilian smile.

“May I?” she asked. All he could do was nod. She popped it open and wrapped her free hand around the grip, tangling their fingers together and tisking unhappily as she poked around at the parts.  _ “Look  _ at the wiring on this thing, it’s no  _ wonder  _ it nearly melted! You’re generating enough heat to turn the  _ street  _ to  _ slag." _

“It’s a  _ death  _ ray,” he complained, having had this same argument numerous times with numerous people. “It’s  _ supposed  _ to kill them. If I reduce the  _ power,  _ what’s the  _ point?” _

_ “ _H_ eterodynes _ . You have no sense of  _ finesse,  _ the  _ lot  _ of you.” she muttered, before reaching in and ripping out the wiring. It’d cooled enough that her burns were only superficial. Mostly. 

“I don’t  _ need  _ to be subtle if they’re  _ dead _ .”

“I didn’t say  _ subtlety,  _ I said  _ finesse.”  _ She snapped the casing shut and aimed for the window, hitting an assassin the jaegers had knocked loose like she was shooting pigeon shot. The body disintegrated before it even hit the ground. “They can’t find the  _ bodies  _ if there aren’t any  _ bodies  _ to  _ find." _

“Marry me,” he breathed.

“With wiring like  _ that?" _  she scoffed. She shoved the death ray back into his hands, still scanning the street. 

Wait. Was that a joke? It sounded like a joke. Drat. 

Kay, feeling somewhat mortified (God, he’d just  _ met  _ her, and asked her to  _ marry  _ him, he was such an  _ idiot),  _ leaned out his window to address the jaeger on the side of the coach. “Is that the last of them?” 

Andre gave him a knowing and somewhat lecherous grin, which did not help the expression on Kay’s face. “Hy dunno, iz eet?” he called up.

“Deez guys iz slippery, but Hy dink ve gotz dem all,” Oggie called from the roof. 

Kay sat back down and offered Anevka a wide grin. “Looks like you’re in the clear, your highness.”

“I suppose I should make my daring escape now,” she said, tapping her chin with the screwdriver. She handled it the same way he’d seen some jaegers handle knives. 

“I’d be a very poor Heterodyne if I kidnapped a beautiful princess and then let her  _ escape.”  _

“Did you kidnap me? I thought you people had given up on that kind of thing,” she said, her eyes teasing.

“Yes,” he said dramatically, holding a hand to his heart. “After what happened to my grandfather, the townspeople have been very adamant about only bringing home  _ willing  _ brides. It’s made dating so much harder.”

“Oh, you seem to be doing just fine.” 

As Kay’s brain tried valiantly to decode that sentence, Anevka leaned over him to speak to Andre. It was a very calculated lean. She was almost entirely in his lap. 

“I don’t suppose you know how to get to my Grandmother’s townhouse from here?” she asked.

“Dot beeg vite vun en de square vit de funtin vit all de naked vimmen? Ho yez, ve sacked dot vit Master Ominox… vot vos eet, sixty years hago?”

“Feefty four,” Maxim said, leaning out of the driver’s seat. The wheels began to swerve into oncoming traffic. Kay caught a split second of Dimo’s scowling face before he yanked Maxim back out of view.

“Ja, ja, eet’s chust two roof hops dataway. Hy ken tell Dimo und he cood sving uz arond.”

“No, that’s quite alright. I’m already covered in blood, showing up in a hired coach will just make her worry even more,” Anevka said, landing back into her seat.

“Oh!” Kay shot up and leaned out the window again. “Can you send someone to go check if the driver is still alive?”

“Ja, ja, hyu gotz et boss,” Andre said, waving his free hand dismissively again. 

There was a short, barely audible slap fight and then Maxim was thrown out of the driver’s seat as the carriage drove past. Kay leaned further out of the cab. 

“And reimburse him for stealing his cab!”

Maxim switched his obscene gesture to a thumbs up. 

Anevka gave Kay a lavish grin as he sat back down. “I do hope to see you again, Lord Heterodyne. Are you in town all week?”

“I’m in town for as long as you want me to be,” his mouth said. Anevka’s eyebrows went up. Andre started laughing and Kay thumped the wall. Maybe if he hit it hard enough he could make him fall off. “That is, my schedule is flexible. So I’m free for you whenever.”

She propped her elbow on the door and smiled enticingly. There was something more calculated about her expression this time. She was trying to draw him in, and it was working.

“So. Thursday afternoon, then,” she said, and then disappeared. 

Kay swore and scrambled up. His knee jammed in a shriek of metal-on-metal and he almost smacked his teeth onto the door. He studied the street, but there wasn’t any sign of her. He slumped back, staring mournfully at the ceiling. 

“I have no idea what just happened.”


End file.
